The Church as a Family

Pastor preached a great sermon this week out of 1 Timothy 5 about how when we need to confront other believers about an issue of faith, (especially when they are near the cliff of a heresy) that we should treat them like a family member. He also talked about how we actually treat our own biological and cultural family members, and how if we don’t “provide” for them we are worse than an unbeliever.

This caused me to think about what it means to treat my family as God has instructed, and also whether our modern North American Evangelical church culture is really anything like a family. I was deeply convicted by the message, and this is the outworking of my thinking about the topic. Continue reading “The Church as a Family”

Church and The Church

This week I read two posts by Donald Miller on the Storyline Blog.  One was talking about how he doesn’t connect to God when singing in corporate worship, in which he shared that he didn’t attend church frequently.  Apparently the Evangelical community took issue with this and he followed up with what I thought was a really, really thoughtful treatment on the topic of church attendance and church community.

I have my own thoughts, and I know a lot of evangelicals who have walked away from church membership or regular attendance in a local church.  A few years ago I wrote a few posts about Church stuff, and while they are interesting, they are not nearly as incisive as his so I suggest that you all read his posts.

Regardless of whether my own thoughts are insightful, I thought I would share some new thoughts that came while reading the blog posts. Continue reading “Church and The Church”

Why We Often Lack Fellowship

In a recent conversation with my son, who is away at college, he shared that he felt that he was not deeply connecting with other Christians on campus. This is his second semester, and while I heard the same story last semester, I kinda just blew it off, saying “These things take time…” and other platitudes hoping that the situation would correct itself.

This time, my son expressed some self doubt, asking me, “Is it something that I am doing wrong?”, so I took it perhaps a little more seriously. This is somewhat like the conversation we had:

Tell me about a time when you experienced “fellowship” in the past. Was that in your high school youth group?
Yes.
Was it the whole time you were in the group?
No. It was after I started expressing more commitment to my faith, in my Junior year.
Were you involved in serving or helping?
Yes. I was on the worship team, doing “tech”, and in SLT (student leadership training).
So you experienced the deepest fellowship when you were expressing commitment to your faith by serving alongside other believers?
Hmmm.
Are you serving alongside other believers now?
Not really, it is hard to get plugged in, my schedule always seems to interfere.
You are part of Intervarsity, right? Are there ways you can serve in that group, that don’t require lots of time commitment or on flexible schedules?
I don’t know. I suppose. I have wanted to get into the leadership team, and on the worship team, but the schedule doesn’t seem to be working out.
Have you thought about just finding other ways to “help out”?
Hmmm…..

In our conversation, I asked what he thought fellowship was, and what it was for; why God gave that deep connectedness to members of his body? Continue reading “Why We Often Lack Fellowship”